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The hourly rate was a hundred bucks, about the same as a small-time prostitute’s.
Not that there wouldn’t have been pressure to find out who killed him if he’d been a plumber or a bartender. But preachers still had a special place in the hearts and minds of most upper east Tennesseans.
Killing a man of God was an insult to the Almighty Himself.
“Just like a man. Always wanting something for nothing.”
Landers had also heard some of the preachers down there were snake-handlers, religious extremists who proved their faith by waving copperheads and rattlesnakes around while they delivered their sermons.
Erlene paused for a skinny minute and looked at their faces.
My freshman year in high school, during the time when the hormones were pouring and I felt like I wasn’t in control of anything, including my own body,
helped me learn how to raise them. She nudged me when I needed nudging, held me back when I needed holding back, and did her best to keep my outlook optimistic.
And along the way, I made an unfortunate discovery. I learned that many of the police officers and prosecutors who were on the other side weren’t much different from the criminals I was defending. They didn’t give a crap about the truth—all they cared about was winning.
Her left eyebrow was slightly higher than her right, giving the impression that she was perpetually interested, or maybe perpetually perplexed.
I thought he was pompous and effeminate. He thought I was a belligerent Neanderthal. Both of us were probably a little bit right.
If you weren’t ready to prosecute her, you shouldn’t have indicted her.
You have taken my father’s life, Jezebel, and upon you, I swear revenge.”
tardiness was nothing but bad manners, and that people with bad manners lacked character.
When he passed, the lawyer told Erlene she was worth as much as Jed Clampett.
I’d gotten up and was leaning against the block wall, contemplating my fingernails. Sarah had long ago perfected the art of the addict’s vitriolic tirade. The words floated past me like tiny ghosts. I didn’t allow them to linger.
Glass had recently developed some kind of infection in his leg and was spending a lot of his time on the bench high on the same kind of painkillers Randall had been taking when he murdered the baby.
“I don’t care.” “Really? Why not?” “‘Cause I know I done wrong and I deserve to die.”
“You just do the best you can. God will take care of the rest.”
I just don’t think it’s right for a government to pass laws telling its citizens they can’t kill each other and then turn around and kill its citizens. It just seems hypocritical to me.”
Glass was a bully, and like all bullies, he became angry and confused when people stood up to him.
“Why?” I said. That simple, three-letter word was the one I knew judges hated the most. Most of them didn’t feel like they had to explain themselves. They were judges, after all. They wore a robe, and the robe gave them the power to do pretty much whatever they pleased.
she sucks up drugs like a vacuum cleaner,
Hornier than three-peckered billy goats,
“I need to know the best way to lead a horse to water and then not let him drink,”
When they asked Maynard why he didn’t fight, he said he used up all his bullets on his mama.
She was glad, she said, because she was afraid if they locked him up she might lose some of her Social Security benefits. He packed up a few things in an old duffel bag and got into a car with some of his friends around three that afternoon. She hadn’t seen him since. She hated him, she said. He killed her dog.
Mr. Dillard’s client is willing to enter a no contest plea to aggravated assault.”
She wouldn’t accept help from anyone. She didn’t say much and thought the world was a terrible place.
found myself falling deeper and deeper into a mental abyss. No sleep. No appetite. No exercise. Nothing seemed to give me pleasure anymore, not even music. My attitude was becoming more and more fatalistic and hopeless. I had no enthusiasm, and no particular interest in anything, including sex. It was as though I’d become a passionless robot, simply existing from day to day without feeling.
“My mother and I weren’t even close. All those years, all that time together. I grew up in her house. She raised me, Caroline, and I can’t remember a single meaningful conversation between us. Do you know what I was thinking a little while ago? In four years of high school, I played in over forty football games, over a hundred basketball games and over a hundred baseball games, and she never came to a single one. She never saw me play. Not once.”
Caroline had contacted Ma’s best friend, a woman named Katie Lowe, to give the eulogy. I sat there, not really listening, until she began to talk about Elizabeth’s children. I heard some things about my mother that I hadn’t known before, things that Ma had told Katie about Sarah and me. One of them was that Ma had been so proud of me when I graduated from law school that she cried. I’d never seen my mother cry, and I’d never heard her say a word about being proud of me.
understand, I felt the impulse to bend down and kiss her casket. I’d kissed her at the nursing home, but not until she was too far gone to feel it. When I kissed her casket, I realized that I hadn’t ever given her a meaningful kiss. The thought made it almost impossible to keep from breaking down.
She’s gone and you’re still here, I said to myself. She’s gone and you’re still here. You’re alive. You have people who love you. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. ... Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
was his interpretation of the evidence, and as every one of you knows, there are two sides to every story.
you must have virtually no doubt that she committed this terrible crime. And beyond that, the judge will instruct you that in a case based on circumstantial evidence such as this one, you can find Miss Christian guilty only if there is no other reasonable theory of guilt.
Do you know what I’m going to do to her on the witness stand?” “I was planning to make it a point to be in the courtroom for her cross-examination,” Baker said with a smirk. “Wouldn’t want to miss it.
I could see her make the decision. And having made it, she sat up straight and squared her shoulders, as if a great burden had been lifted.
I couldn’t see her spending time in prison for retaliating against a man who had violated her in the most shameful of ways.
“I’m going to wring that dog’s neck.” “I guess it isn’t good.” “I’m sick of him pissing all over me. I’m sick of everybody pissing all over me.”
I’d spent part of the drive home working up a healthy anger toward Caroline. I had to provide for her, which meant I had to keep working. But I was sick of busting my butt for people who neither deserved it nor appreciated it, sick of people using me and lying to me, sick of worrying about whether what I was doing was right or wrong. I was sick of everything.
“How dare you talk to me like that!” Caroline said. “I know you hate your job. I know you hate yourself sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you get to take it out on me. I haven’t done a thing other than love you and try to help you through a difficult time, and I’m not going to stand here and listen to you degrade me. I’m not your whipping girl, Joe!” All I could feel was the pressure in my head. I was losing it. I pushed past her and walked back into the kitchen.
talked deep into the morning. I’d never experienced anything like it, but when it was over, I understood the power of confession.
“Because you’re a good man, Joe. It’s as simple as that. That’s why I married you and why I’ve loved you for all these years. That’s why your children adore you. It’s why you’ve stuck by Sarah all this time and why you went up there and sat with your mother. It’s why you’ve spent your life trying to help people. I hope you’re always just like you are now.” Her words humbled me. I didn’t know what to say.
Jail inmates hate a lot of things. They hate the guards, they hate the food, they hate the tedium. But there are two things they hate most of all. One is a child molester, the other is a snitch.
“Do you expect this jury to believe you, Ms. Dillard?” Martin said. “You’re a convicted thief and a drug addict, aren’t you?” “I was a convicted thief and a drug addict when Agent Landers came to the jail. That didn’t seem to bother him when he was trying to get me to
but I couldn’t resist twisting the knife a little,
I knew Angel was guilty, but the jury didn’t. They set her free.
“I saw this TV show where a man got convicted of rape because he had the girl’s DNA on his terwilliger. I got to thinking that Angel’s DNA might be on his terwilliger, and—well, you know, if the police did come around and start asking questions—I didn’t want her to have to explain something like that. Besides, sugar, he didn’t need it anymore.”
